QuickLogic wearables sensor hub operates under 250µW

QuickLogic Corp. has unveiled an ultra-low-power, context-aware sensor hub that offers wearable-specific use cases and contexts, and claims to deliver them at less than 250µW, boosting battery life.

The S1 Wearables Sensor Hub supports a variety of popular contexts and gestures, providing the flexibility to develop smarter and more intuitive fitness and health applications for a wide range of activities. Walking, running, cycling, sitting, and standing comprise the context support, and rotate-to-wake and tap-to-wake, the gesture.

The hub belongs to the company's CSSP (Customer-Specific Standard Product) platform family utilising the ArcticLink 3 S1 silicon platform, which features a combination of hard logic and programmable fabric. It includes several PSB (Proven System Block) technologies, including Sensor Manager, Flexible Fusion Engine, and Communications Manager.

The hub autonomously samples and manages data from multiple sensors found in wearable devices. It features a unique system timing and control implementation to accommodate the low-power architectures of wearable devices. This enables offloading of the real-time, always-on computation to the hub, which results in reduced overall system power, thus extending battery life.

The hub includes a base CSSP platform, which can be customized with OEM or third-party sensor algorithms. Source: QuickLogic

What is a sensor?
A device that receives and responds to a stimulus or signal. Sensors measure real-world conditions, such as heat or light, and then converts this condition into analog or digital representation.